


Empires Rise, Empires Fall

by hooksandheroics



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, F/M, Friends With Benefits, Roommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-17
Updated: 2016-02-17
Packaged: 2018-05-21 05:26:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6039952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hooksandheroics/pseuds/hooksandheroics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke gains a stranger for a roommate, a crush, a fuckbuddy, and a superhero partner. And they might all just be the same person. (Written for BSV 2016)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Empires Rise, Empires Fall

**Author's Note:**

> (written for bravnlarke on tumblr for bellarke secret valentines 2016)

It totally makes a difference when you’re _in_ it than when you’re spectating, so Clarke can ignore whatever her friends say about her and Bellamy’s living arrangements.

Clarke was in the last leg of the semester her sophomore year when Octavia Blake, her accidentally permanent seatmate in her Art History class, told her that her brother needed a roommate and then proceeded to list all the pros and cons of living with this person that Clarke had never met on _her_ yellow legal pad. The list was very convincing without imposing.

The truth was this: Clarke had been suffering through two of the most nightmarish people she has ever met as roommates. And Octavia presenting her with an opportunity to move out of the Dorm of Hell was exactly what she needed. Never mind the very real possibility that she might also hate this brother.

By the end of the week, she was ready to move out and into an apartment with Bellamy Blake. Despite having only seen him in several pictures with his sister and in the apartment itself.

As far as moving in with complete strangers, moving in with Bellamy Blake was by far on the top of the scales. Not that Clarke has ever moved in with complete strangers before, but she wasn’t murdered (yet) so she counted that as a win.

Bellamy Blake was the perfect roommate that first month. He never left dirty dishes on the sink, the general niceness of a person she has never held a conversation with for more than five minutes. That’s also the thing about why Bellamy Blake was the perfect roommate: he never stayed long enough to reveal if he’s truly genuinely annoying the way you discover a person’s annoying personality, also never long enough to reveal anything about himself other than the occasional tidbits about Octavia and his job. Basically, she knew nothing about him.

Clarke has always known being a cop was the kind of job that required a lot from one’s self. But most of the time, it felt like she was living with a ghost. A ghost who paid rent and left Chinese takeout on the fridge for when she arrives home very late at night. A very thoughtful ghost. A very mysterious, very thoughtful ghost. She didn’t mind, though, not very often. It actually totally works for her.

And then, on the summer after her sophomore year, Bellamy gets sent home from duty with a huge chunk of his abdomen bleeding, and proceeded to stay at home for the next couple of months.

In retrospect, Clarke could have figured out easily who Bellamy Blake was by those series of events, but seeing as her roommate was then severely injured and needed caring and Octavia could not stay for more than a couple of days at a time, and she was a med student. Well, she was stumped.

The very first words that Clarke had said to Bellamy that wasn’t a ‘good morning’ or ‘good night’ was when he limped into the threshold of their apartment with Octavia under his arm, supporting his weight.

“You’re bleeding,” she said, very intelligently. She was making a thing for the children in the community center’s summer Art program she was teaching part-time when they barged in.

He snorted and then grimaced in pain. “No shit.”

He looked worn out, and still grimy and dirty. His uniform was ripped open from the side where Clarke could see the white and red of the gauze surrounding his stomach. Octavia carefully sat him down on the sofa and turned to her, gaze intense and heavy.

“There was a shootout, he got shot,” Octavia said, voice hard and brooking no argument.

Clarke looked at Bellamy, who was breathing heavily on the sofa, eyes squeezed shut. He looked like he’s in extreme pain. “Shouldn’t he be in the hospital, at least?”

Octavia looked furious, as if her suggestion was the worst thing she has ever heard. Clarke was not sure why. “He got discharged. He’s gonna be fine. I’ll be here to take care of him –

“Octavia, no.” Bellamy was sitting upright – or at least trying to – and his eyes were alert and on his sister. “You cannot miss your internship. Not for this.”

And then they proceeded to have a conversation entirely with the intensity of their gazes. If this was what it felt like getting caught in a Blake sibling’s crossfire, Clarke vowed never to be present whenever it happened.

Bellamy seemed to have won because Octavia turned to her and said, “ _You_ will help my brother.” She seemed to have sensed her vigor and toned it down, her eyes pleading and softer. Yeah, Octavia Blake was a hurricane. “I – I’ll come visit as much as I can, but I have this _thing_ that I can’t skip. I just… you’re a med student, right?”

“Okay,” Clarke said after seconds. “I’m free this summer anyway. I got this.”

That was a lie. See, there’s this _thing_ for Clarke too, that she thought she would have more time with, now that it’s the summer and there were less things to worry about. She has this whole other life apart from being a normal college student which takes a lot out of her, but still – Clarke is part of this coalition called _The Ark_ , a congregation of Boston’s finest vigilantes, and she thought she was going to have a looser time now than before to make up for the hours she missed while in college.

When Clarke was ten, she discovered that she can break concrete walls with her fist and heal herself pretty quickly. When she told her parents, only one of them was excited, the other was Abby Griffin. Back then, the best thing they could do about this new discovery was find someone to help her control her powers. Thus, calling the attention of _The Ark_. She grew up with most of the people in her squad, knows them well, and has worked with them ever since they were old enough and strong enough to be sent into the field.

With a new Big Bad on the loose, her comrades had been on high alert. It also wasn’t helping that her friends were dropping like flies here and there after just one encounter with this Big Bad. Monroe and Harper were the last ones on the long list of superheroes that this Big Bad had rendered practically useless.

Monty’s not sure what exactly this Big Bad can do, but what they do know was that even the fastest healers were having a hard time recovering from his attacks. And if Monty doesn’t know stuff, it’s usually really bad for them.

Of course – _of fucking course,_ Bellamy Blake was not the perfect roommate that Clarke made him out to be. It could just be his injury making him a terrible patient, but God he could be less insufferable in general.

She thought he was just really organized, she didn’t know the extent until she heard a crash in the middle of the night and she thought they were being broken into – it turned out it was just Bellamy doing a general cleaning of the living room, specifically the window. Which. _Who the fuck does that in the middle of the night?_

“Weren’t the meds supposed to knock you out?” she sighed, picking up the pieces of her one terrible attempt at pottery. Luckily, he resigned himself on the couch, exhausted and worn out. She wanted to tell him some version of ‘I told you so’ that’s appropriate for someone severely injured, but she’s a good person, in general.

He huffed. “They weren’t strong enough.”

She rolled her eyes. “Right.” She disposed of the shards and turned to look at him, hands on her hips and all. “No more cleaning in the middle of the night.”

He snorted, amused. But his hand was still on his side, and he looked paler – much, much paler. She couldn’t help but wonder if the gunshot wound was that severe for it to last that long, or if he’s just a shitty injured person.

She sat down next to him on the sofa and felt his forehead with the back of her hand, and his closed eyes opened to give her an unreadable gaze. She ignored it, just like the other times she had done this and he gave the exact same response. He was a little feverish, and his breathing was a little labored and it started quiet alarm bells in her mind.

Her fingers went to the buttons of his shirt immediately, and she could deny that unbuttoning his shirt was doing things to her because there were more pressing matters at hand.

She found a blooming red spot in the middle of all the white of the gauze, willed herself to stay calm, because she’s a med student and this was just normal. Sometimes, hard-headed patients split their stitches.

“You’re bleeding again,” she said, lifting the cloth to find the clotted blood on his skin. (She had like half a mind to marvel at his toned stomach, and his freckled skin. And then back on work mode.)

He laughed humorlessly, his muscles rippling at the sound, and it made her skin heat up. “I have to take you to the hospital.”

“No!” he exclaimed, grabbing her wrist in a death grip, startling her. “No, just – please. You can stitch me up, I have the – ah – stuff under my bed. Just –

“I’m going to call Octavia.” That’s her compromise because if she couldn’t take him to the hospital, then she at least had to notify his sister.

He nodded and closed his eyes, sweat beading on his forehead.

An idea blooms and Clarke finds herself cursing under her breath. Lately, she had been trying to learn how to heal other people – transferring the energy or some shit. Lincoln had been diligently training her between teaching his Art classes and being _Crimson_. She hadn’t had the time to attend his classes but she could try doing it for Bellamy. It would be quick, his healing would be slow, but his bleeding would stop and he wouldn’t feel anything. Her identity would be safe. She had thought this through in the minutes between seeing him bleeding and deciding it would definitely be a win-win situation.

He was on his bed, face contorted in pain. She could tell it was bad, and his stubbornness about going to the hospital was grating on her nerves (and niggling at her curiosity). She put her hands on his skin, feeling the power surge through her fingertips and into his system. A second later, the bleeding stopped, but she still redid his stitches. For show. And it was his fault anyway, he deserved it.

By one in the morning, everything was alright again, he was patched up and knocked out by the meds just like he should have been an hour ago. Still, she couldn’t get rid of the relief in her chest when his breathing evened out and he finally fell asleep. Octavia arrived a few minutes later and Clarke briefed her of what happened. She was a little surprised by the ferocity of Octavia’s embrace, but she took it. She was exhausted as hell, a little comfort was okay.

After that little fiasco, things started mellowing out. She took it as him thanking her for the trouble, and she couldn’t exactly complain because he was being cordial. Still, she had a lot of questions in mind – questions that felt too personal to ask, so she pushed them to the back of her mind and made pancakes with him in the mornings, went grocery shopping with him every week, and watched obscure documentaries on Netflix with him.

By the end of the first month, she could confidently say that they’re friends.

They still bickered and fought, but things didn’t seem as grim as they used to be.

Now on the topic of her weird living arrangements with Bellamy: it’s not like she went up to him and sucked his dick. She _asked_. Very nicely, at that.

It felt very natural, actually. The Tudors was playing on the TV, and initially, it was supposed to let Bellamy let his frustrations out by yelling about how inaccurate the history stuff were – what they didn’t anticipate was the sex. Clarke has watched a lot of TV shows with a lot of sex in them, but she usually did it alone, in the comfort of her own bed.

Now she had to endure the awkwardness of seeing it with her roommate, and she just. Okay, she could admit that Bellamy’s attractive. Like, if she could probably say unnaturally gorgeous, she would. And he’s also adorable in a way, because he always never notices his glasses sliding down his nose until it actually falls off his face, and he averted his eyes whenever a sex scene comes on, like he’s embarrassed to be seen watching it. She’s endeared, to say the least. Besides, she’s been trying to either eradicate her humongous crush on him or act on it. Apparently, her brain decided to act on it that night.

And so when she said, “Hey, you wanna have sex?”

He startled, the pillow he was hugging close flying off the couch and onto the floor. “What? Yes. Yes?”

It’s cute that when she slid a hand up under his shirt, and another down his pants, his eyes darkened and his body jolted into action. He’s just really, really –

Bellamy kissed like it’s his favorite thing to do, and suddenly all the pressing questions fled from her mind. There was only this, and his fingers gentle on her jaw, his tongue against hers, and making soft small noises into her mouth. His hand found the button of her jean shorts and nothing else mattered.

“Ground rules,” she managed to blurt out once they’re done. They’re still both breathing pretty heavily, sweat still glistening on their skins, and her legs still felt like jelly. She honestly didn’t know what to expect – like sure, she _had_ imagined him a few times before. In private. But she didn’t know just how good it would be. _And it was good_.

That’s why she needed ground rules.

Being a part-time vigilante doesn’t necessarily prohibit romantic relationships. It’s that their world is already really complicated with all the aliases and the identities, and the baddies that are more than capable of destroying things beyond _The Ark_ ’s reach, her friends had elected not to entangle themselves with people other than those in the coalition itself.

Besides, this recent Big Bad seemed bigger than they initially thought he was – almost as if he has eyes inside the police, which was about as dangerous as they can get. And one of their biggest allies had been MIA the past month, according to Monty.

For the past two years, _The Ark_ has been getting serious help from a lone vigilante called _Shadow_. Despite pretty convincing attempts, this _Shadow_ refused to join the group due to reasons unknown, so after one too many attempts, they just gave up on asking him. He still helped them, though, and that’s the most important part because they _need_ him most of the time. Kane has always been clear on that.

Clarke had only encountered _Shadow_ twice: once, while taking down a bunch of _Reapers_ with her friends, and only from afar, and the other time when she saw him scaling up the side of a building. He had smirked at her, gave her a two-finger salute, and then disappeared.

She knew nothing about most things in her life right now, she needed something she can foresee. So. Ground rules.

Which brings her to the present.

The present being that they seem to both be on the same page when it comes to their relationship.

Clarke has _never_ done this before, have thought about doing it before, but inadvertently backed out because… well, for a number of reasons. After having broken up with Finn, her head didn’t seem all that clear enough to venture into something like casual sex. And then, there was Lexa. She was in the coalition, seemed the safest relationship she could ever have. But then she turned around and stabbed them all in the back – and what was supposed to be the safest thing became the most dangerous.

She was a mess for a while, immersing herself into med school and _The Ark_ and making sure to build back what Lexa destroyed.

But right now? It sounds like the perfect time. She’s single, Bellamy’s single, they’re both imprisoned in this apartment until he’s healed enough to go back to work – and honestly, there’s an air of tension between them, accumulated from all those times she’s undressed him to take care of his wound. That may just be her, but he’s not complaining so.

Besides, he would probably not have accepted her offer if he didn’t at least want her in some level.

His smile is sweet, content, and a little smug as she comes down from her second orgasm, and she can’t help but think if there’s a way for this to become something else. Something more. And then he’s kissing her again, deep and wet and hot that every thought dissolves into just a steady stream of _oh god_.

“You love this,” he breathes on the skin of her neck as his hand skims down her stomach and strokes her between the legs.

She has about a millisecond of panic when she thought she heard wrong before it becomes clear. “Sex? Of course,” she manages.

He hums quietly, lips closing around her earlobe. “My mouth. On your skin.”

He’s not wrong, though. He’s very good with his mouth (and hands, and just basically everything – it’s hard to believe he gets laid only as much as she does), and she appreciates it. So much.

She trails her hand down his chest, wraps her fingers around his hardness and his breath hitches. She smirks and he laughs quietly. “And _you_ love my hands on you,” she whispers, meeting his dark eyes.

Something unreadable passes behind his gaze, but it disappears as a smile takes its place. He has a really nice smile, she thinks quietly. “Yes,” he replies, dazed and breathless, as she starts stroking him in earnest.

It has been a week since that first encounter, and Clarke had initially intended for this to just be a one-time thing, _honestly_. She just did not anticipate how hard it is to live with a one-night stand, constantly seeing them and having the urge to find out if it’s as good as the first time around – or the second time – honestly, she could see how they both still could not put this thing down and she’s alright with it. She could maintain a normal life while also having sex with Bellamy.

She _could_.

And also be friends with him – it’s not that hard.

The truth is this: being friends with Bellamy is as natural as having sex with him. Clarke finds things out pretty easily about him once he’s down for socializing with her. She finds him perusing the TV only to stop at HGTV and yell at the people onscreen. He reveals later on that watching reality TV shows were his and Octavia’s thing back when they were kids when their little defective television set accidentally caught some of their next door neighbor’s cable channels.

She also learns that he makes the best homemade dishes that she has ever tasted. Not that she has tasted a lot of Filipino dishes before, but he’s clearly very comfortable in the kitchen.

“My father stayed with us for a while when I was ten and Octavia was three,” he tells her one day as he’s chopping garlic. She’s leaning against the counter, pretending to work on a lesson plan, but actually just watching him do his thing in the kitchen. She’s being _very_ subtle. “He wasn’t the best person to be around with, sometimes he forgot that he had a child, well, children. But – ah – in the times that he did remember, he would make us watch him as he puttered around the kitchen, making the best food I have ever tasted. He wasn’t very good at staying, but at least he kept us fed.”

He smiles up at her briefly, checks the heat under the pan and puts the lid on it. “One day he left, a few weeks later, we found out that he was dead.”

He chuckles at her blank stare. “I’m making _Adobo_. It’s pretty easy, I can teach you next time.”

She blushes and it must show because he smirks and turns back to his cooking. _Fuck this crush_.

Well she _is_ fucking her crush, so it might just be a win if she looks at it at a certain optimistic perspective.

And then one day, it’s her. It’s her that’s revealing something about herself, bowl of half-consumed popcorn between them, cold beer’s condensation making rings on the cloth of the couch’s arm, in the middle of the fourth episode of Scrubs.

“My dad always said ‘some people are here to save lives, some are here to inspire them’.” JD has just said goodbye to the elderly patient on the screen. There might be a tear of two in her eyes.

“Your dad seems like a wise man,” Bellamy comments, gaze still on the screen, but his shoulders are more tense. As if he senses the oddness in her tone.

“He’s, uh, he died. Five years ago.”

He doesn’t break his neck turning to look at her, but she feels like he almost did but is trying very hard not to let her notice. His eyes are soft, giving her a choice of whether to continue or to breeze through it. She chooses the more dangerous path – it feels like he might understand, with the way he’s looking at her.

“He got radiation poisoning from work.” She takes a swig from her beer and looks ahead, not even watching what’s on the TV anymore. “We found out when it was too late. It wasn’t – he didn’t make it seem as serious as it actually was. Always told me the pain was a number four when it’s way past eight and I’ve always thought he was going to live forever. He, uh. He didn’t.” She scoffs and then looks at him. He’s quiet and gentle when he takes her hand in his, when he rubs his thumb on her knuckles, and suddenly she feels at ease. “He worked his entire life to save lives. I wish I had the chance to save his.”

There’s only so much she can tell Bellamy without giving away her secret – that her father was a member of _The Ark_ , and that he worked so hard to find the cures to more than a hundred diseases that only people like them can acquire. That he was the one that gave Raven her bionic leg, that he was the one who saved Wells from a fatal shot to the carotid artery. She wishes up to this day that she hadn’t left the headquarters the night that the Radioactive Monster raided the place. That she was there with Lincoln and Raven to defend her dad.

Jake Griffin was a hero, and all he got was an obituary bit on the paper the next morning after his death.

For a minute, he just looks at her. There are words suspended in the air between them, but both of them know they’re better left unsaid. She thinks when a person finds someone who understands that there are only so many things that can be said to and about an old pain, the only response to that would be:

“That sucks,” he says, a small understanding smile on his lips.

“It’s in the past,” she says, returning his smile with one of hers. It feels lighter somehow, her chest. “And besides, I handled it myself.”

“I’d never doubt that.”

She shakes her head with a watery sigh and kisses him breathless. There’s no other answer to it than that.

Anyway. Being friends with him is as natural as being fuckbuddies with him, and she refuses to think about why exactly.

*

Raven Reyes _is not_ a telepath – she has a bionic leg and an affinity for technology, not mind-reading skills, but she could very damn well be because when Clarke sat down in across from her, she raised one eyebrow and said, “Are you fucking your roommate?”

Clarke shoots her the most scandalized look she can muster. Raven gestures to her neck – which she thought she had done a great job covering up, but it’s Raven.

She crosses her arms in front of her and raises her eyebrows, too. “I could be fucking somebody else.”

Raven frowns, unbelieving. “You haven’t left your apartment for anything except for your volunteer work in a week.”

“I called someone?”

Raven shakes her head, a smirk on her lips. “Do you _honestly_ believe I’ll bite that? Come on, Clarke.”

After that, it feels futile to even fight her on this. She’s right.

Clarke has been fucking her roommate for a week now, and she can’t say she has a lot of regrets. Bellamy is great. Like, personality-wise, now that they’ve driven past the initial awkwardness of being strangers, and straight into a deeper kind of friendship. And he’s also great in bed, which is a bonus.

“I’m actually a psychic,” she tells Clarke, smug. “My bionic leg has given me psychic powers.”

“Okay, so big deal. My roommate and I are fuckbuddies. People have fuckbuddies.”

“Yes, but consider this, too: you have a huge crush on him and feelings _can_ get in the way.” She sips her tea to punctuate her statement.

Wells decides to appear at Raven’s shoulder right on cue, his smile warm at both of them as he puts down the tray with their orders on the table. “What are we talking about?”

Clarke says, “Nothing”, just about the same time Raven says “Clarke is fucking her roommate”.

Wells shrugs. “He’s hot. Congrats.”

“She’s also in love with him.”

Wells winces, then shoots her an apologetic look. “I don’t know if that sucks or if it’s exactly what you want. But, uh. Congrats on getting laid?”

Clarke huffs, giving Raven the stink eye. “I am _not_ in love with Bellamy, I’m just having sex with him.”

“Right, while also harboring a colossal crush. Clarke, I’m disappointed. Have you never watched a rom com with me?”

“Alright, listen – in one month, he’ll be back on his feet, out of the house, and over whatever this is that we’re on. He’s a cop, I’m in the coalition, we would both be busy. It’s _fine_.”

Clarke feels a tiny prickling in her heart when she hears herself say those facts, but she pushes the feeling to the back of her mind and tries very hard to give Raven a dismissive air.

Raven snorts. “Say it one more time, but like you mean it.”

“I’m serious!”

“I’m just saying – it’s gonna blow up in your faces one day, and I’m gonna be there saying ‘I told you so’.” Raven takes another pointed sip from her tea, eyes never leaving Clarke.

“I hate you.”

People can have friends with benefits, it’s totally achievable. People go into that kind of relationship and come out unscathed. Raven will eat her smugness.

Wells, who has been quiet during this entire immature exchange, leans forward, eyes grim and serious. “You said he was injured one month ago?”

Clarke turns to him, curious. “Yeah, he got shot in a shootout downtown.”

“Yes,” Wells says slowly, he has his thinking face on and it’s kind of freaking her out. Even Raven has shut up to listen. “And _Cage_ disappeared a month ago, too. Bellamy’s also a cop?”

“Wells, you’re freaking me out. What do you have?” Clarke says, swallows the bitterness at the back of her throat.

He pulls out his phone, puts his palm over the screen and they watch as it pulls up several different records, files, and websites. Even now, Clarke still marvels at his ability to talk to machines. It’s kind of cool, but would also be creepy, if it weren’t Wells. “These are the police files from one month ago,” he says, showing them the screen. “I scanned that specific date, and even two days before and after that. There were _no_ shootouts. You know what’s there, though?”

“What?”

“I uncovered a deleted record from that night, it’s a detailed account of a witness saying they saw _Cage_ fleeing to an alley, bloodied and weak.” Wells puts his phone back in his pocket and frowns at both of them. “Someone with an access to the encrypted police records deleted the file.”

“Are you saying…?”

“I’m not going to accuse right away, but I have a very strong feeling that Bellamy’s somehow involved in all these.” Wells regards her with a careful stare. “ _Cage_ disappeared the same time Bellamy got ‘shot’.”

“Clarke,” Raven grabs her arm. “Are you _literally_ sleeping with the enemy?”

“No!” And then she thinks about it. “I don’t know. Maybe. He could just be a damn cop, okay? He could be a _nobody_.”

Raven and Wells give her uncannily similar unbelieving stares. She hates it when they gang up on her, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that they could be right.

*

Clarke meant to find out the truth as soon as possible, but then… _distractions_.

The worst thing is that it _isn’t even sex_ that distracted her. It’s him in the kitchen, in his threadbare tee, wearing an apron that’s either a very light pink or just got mixed in with the coloreds, and making something that smells really good.

( _Cage_ would never cook for his roommate – he’d be up plotting evil, or something.)

“Oh, hey Clarke,” he says, looking up from stirring the pot. “How was the business meeting?”

“Very… business-y,” she replies, for lack of a better description to how she and her friends theorized him being a supervillain. “You didn’t get bored?”

He chuckles, turns off the heat and takes his apron off. He turns around and smirks at her. “Your Netflix queue was very interesting.”

“You’re just using me for my Netflix, I knew it.”

“And for paying half the rent.”

She laughs. “Yeah, that too.”

Bellamy walks up to her, caging her against the doorframe of the kitchen and bending down to mouth at her neck. “You ready for dinner or…” he trails off, kisses up her neck, and then finally, her lips. She opens to him and he sighs into her mouth, as if he has been waiting all day to kiss her. That might just be her projection, but she’s definitely starting to think she was like that all day, too, and the thought is terrifying as hell –

He freezes, his hands halting their way down her waist, and pulls away, confused. “What’s wrong?”

And it’s this – his ability to know if something’s wrong, to feel it in even her smallest breaths if she’s thinking or hesitating – that makes her feel safe. Even if he could be their biggest enemy. There are a lot of wrongs with that feeling and this situation, but she couldn’t just ignore it.

She bites her lip. “You’re my friend, right?”

An emotion passes on his face, and then he’s nodding. “Of course. What is it?”

“You’re going to be honest with me?”

He hesitates.

Her heart drops. “Bellamy?”

“What is this about, Clarke?”

He’s now standing in front of her, tense and confused.

If she asked him right now and her friends turn out to be right, she could be in deep trouble. She had not thought this through. It could only just be a coincidence that he got severely shot at the same time that _Cage_ dropped off the face of the Earth. If he _was_ _Cage_ a simple gunshot wouldn’t even feel like a scratch – unless it’s from someone in the coalition who can truly injure him. Or if it’s _Shadow_. Who also disappeared that night. He could be –

“Clarke, what is it?”

She snaps out of her train of thought, shakes her head. “I just wanna know if you’re – if you’re dating someone else?”

As far as saves, it isn’t her best, but at least it got her out of the sticky situation. He gives her a disbelieving look and then a firm ‘no’, lets it go as quickly.

*

Clarke doesn’t get the chance to tell her friends about the theory because that night, she gets an urgent call from _The Ark_.

 _Cage_ has resurfaced. The whole team is needed.

“Tell me _Shadow_ is there,” Clarke says as she maneuvers her car through a quiet, sleepy street. She had a minute to check if Bellamy’s in his room, she didn’t know if she was delighted or horrified that he’s not. Her communication device crackles.

“No,” Monty replies from the headquarters. He’s their resident communications expert, hooks them up with the nearest route to the scene, and makes sure all the lights are green. Without Monty, they would be a hot mess. “Or, not _yet_. He’d be here if he’s not really dead.”

He’s also one of her best friends, and he knows how important this is for her.

“Thanks, Monty. Update me.”

She arrives at the scene and _Cage_ is already there, guns on his shoulders. The thing with this Big Bad is that he would have been easier to identify if his face wasn’t _vibrating_. The only thing they can identify about him is his signature midnight suit and the brown leather briefcase where he puts all the money he gets from the banks he breaks into.

“Alright, squad,” Monty speaks into their ears. Clarke watches as Wells, Raven, Miller, and Lincoln prepare for combat. “Be wary of his hands, injuries he causes are extremely painful, and they heal abnormally slowly. Once you’re out, you’re out. Get Lincoln to teleport you to the headquarters. Good luck.”

 _Cage_ spots them almost as soon as they stepped into his view, a crooked, creepy smile splitting his contorted face. It sends shivers down her back, but her face remains impassive behind her mask. And then his eyes meet hers. “ _The Ark’s_ princess, _Bluejay_.” And then he sneers at the rest of them. “Boston’s finest group of vigilantes – and the _lone wolf_.”

They all turn to where _Shadow_ emerges from the dark of the surrounding buildings. He’s also in a mask, but his whole aura is tense. Still, Clarke couldn’t contain the relief in her chest. “ _Cage_ , long time no see,” he says through gritted teeth.

 _Cage_ hums. “You really did a number on me the last time we met, _Shadow_. I wasn’t expecting such… bravery.”

“I wasn’t expecting such foolishness,” Shadow shoots back, his hands lifting.

The air thins, the atmosphere crackles – Clarke has come to know this as the tell-tale signs of Shadow summoning the friction in the air. It has always been impressive whenever she reads about it, but she has never seen it up close. This time –

Lightning shoots from above, light exploding all around them, momentarily blinding everyone in the vicinity. She’s pretty sure with the power of the attack, Cage would have been pulverized – but their visions clear and on the blackened ground where the lightning hit, there is… nothing.

 _“I’m amazed that you think that would work the second time around,”_ Cage says, his voice seemingly _everywhere_. _“I have learned – and I have brought friends with me.”_

As if on cue, dark figures emerge from all around them, murmurs filling the air and making it heavy. There’s something wrong, Clarke just could not pinpoint if it’s that they have no faces just like _Cage_ , or that they look dead on their feet.

“Are those zombies?” Monty says into the intercom, awestruck despite the dire situation. He’s been reading a lot of World War Z and other undead related fiction as of late.

The nearest one lunges at Raven – she throws a knee into its stomach, and an elbow to its temple, and the creature crumples onto the ground with an ugly, dying noise.

Suddenly, they’re everywhere and _vicious_.

“Find Cage, my bet is that he’s the one controlling these things,” Monty says, keyboard clacking incessantly in their ears. “Be careful. If these are what I think they are, then the injuries they cause are as painful as Cage’s.” Clarke takes another two down swinging her fists, throws one at Lincoln who rips it apart in mid-air with his mind. But it seems that with every one down, there comes more. And Cage is nowhere to be found.

Clarke twists the neck of another. “Monty, do you have a visual on Cage?”

“Negative,” he replies distractedly.

She eyes Raven and Wells, off to a corner getting swarmed. Miller is at the top of a tree, throwing balls of fire down at the ones trying to climb it. Lincoln is dashing from here and there, trying to sense where their foe is. “Contain these things! Don’t let them escape into the streets!” she commands, looking around for the lightning wielder. Everything is chaos and Shadow is nowhere to be found –

A hand wraps around her arm and jerks her around. “You have to get out of here,” Shadow says grimly. His suit has a large tear on the chest, but he seems unfazed by the blood and the chaos. There’s something about the way he’s holding her that’s making her feel like everything has already calmed down.

“Why?”

He makes an irritated noise and shoots electricity at an approaching zombie. “Cage is after you.”

And suddenly, they’re not in front of the bank anymore – but _somewhere_. A dark alley _somewhere_. Clarke can still hear the commotion, can still hear the metal of Raven’s leg, can still sense the air of Wells’ teleportation, but she’s _not_ in the scene. She’s furious.

“What is –

“You stay here,” he says, firm, tone hard and brooking no argument. He looks a little distracted, but his eyes are intense. Well, she couldn’t see his eyes but if she could, she’d bet they’re staring daggers into hers. She just _doesn’t_ know why. And she doesn’t like not knowing.

“I can’t!” she exclaims, pulling her arm from his grip. “My team is out there risking their lives and you want me to hide?”

“You lot don’t even know what he _can_ do,” he argues. “He _absorbs_ abilities, mimics them by drawing blood from his victims. Do you know how many mutants he’s killed by using their own powers against them? How do you defeat a monster that can do what you can do?”

Clarke seethes. This jerk is underestimating her team. “You don’t believe in _The Ark_ ¸ I get it. But I do, and we can do this.”

He makes another irritated noise and it tugs at the pit of her stomach, something akin to familiarity that she _shouldn’t_ feel because she doesn’t know Shadow. “Cage wants _you,_ princess. He thinks if he kills you, the whole of _Ark_ falls and he and his cronies can take over Arcadia.”

“That’s – that’s not even half true!”

“Is it really not?” Shadow takes a deep breath and wets his lips. She knows because his mask only covers the top half of his face and the other half is _very_ distracting. Which is bad. “You might not be the head of everything, but without you, there will be a gaping hole that will eventually destroy everything.”

“How do you know that?”

He averts his gaze, and she realizes just how close they actually are in this godforsaken alley. “I have sources.”

She sighs and he seems to focus on her. “Listen, Shadow – or whatever your real name is, I don’t care. My team needs me. I will go out there and fight until Cage falls. Now you can either drop off the face of the Earth again, or fight with us and let us be. Besides, I can handle myself.”

He tilts his head curiously, and then smirks, the change in his demeanor almost giving her whiplash. “I’d never doubt that.”

Her heart skips a beat, but it’s too late to dwell on it because he’s taking her arm again. When she blinks, they’re back in the middle of everything. She might have been caught off guard by a couple of creatures, but she gets back on her feet beside Lincoln and shoots _Shadow_ a smile from where he is near the door of the bank. He nods at her.

*

The creatures are _not_ that hard to incapacitate, a simple blow to the head can turn them into dust as immediately. The problem is that as one goes down, three more appear from out of nowhere and until they find Cage, they will spend their lives fighting these ugly ass zombies like some kind of fucked up Groundhog Day.

Somehow, she ends up fighting back to back with Shadow, his lightning striking at multiple targets, her fists landing on the ones he misses.

Lincoln is in the middle, entrapping and pulverizing dozens with his magic, Raven’s having a blast with her machine guns, and Wells is taking them down one at a time. Clarke can sense the exhaustion in every one of them, and she can’t exactly deny the exhaustion in her, too.

So she can only blame herself when she doesn’t see a particularly large on lunging at her – when she turns, she can only brace herself for the impact. She has never felt a fatal blow from Cage ever, and if this is it then –

The blow doesn’t come, but she hears a grunt, and when she opens her eyes (when had she closed them?) she sees Shadow crouching on the ground, breathing heavily. He turns his head and it’s – well, the mask is off somewhere on the grassy ground. It’s Bellamy. She can never mistake those eyes, the stray curls damp on his forehead from exertion.

A strong surge of relief floods her chest despite the direness of everything, her mouth moving without thinking. “Bellamy,” she whispers. She watches as his eyes widen in – some kind of emotion that she cannot place as of yet, but she’s fucking relieved.

He gets up and scrambles for his mask, puts it on as if nothing happened. He runs back up to her and shoots a hand past her head, nailing another incoming from behind her. “We’re going to talk about this later,” he hisses as more come towards them.

There’s a crackle in her ear. “Clarke, check the bank, I think he’s doing his dirty work now when all of you are distracted.”

She rushes towards the bank, Shadow (Bellamy) hot on her heels.

Monty isn’t wrong – he’s there and he’s smiling at both of them with his briefcase on the ground. She honestly couldn’t tell if it’s a smile or just a rip on his face. It is _that_ terrifying. “Welcome! Have you figured out what I can do yet?”

“Does it matter?” Clarke says. “You’re going down anyway.”

Cage tuts and strides towards the center of the building. The shadows around them form human shapes, emerge, and become like the ones from outside. “Typical hero bullshit. You lot are so used to getting what you want – I think it’s time for the villains to get theirs.”

The creatures lunge at them, and she goes for Cage, determined not to let him out of her sight. She spares a glance at Shadow and he nods for her to go.

“I have an idea,” Monty tells her. “If you can extract your tracker, you can plant it on him. We can corner Cage in a place where he can’t escape –

“Copy that,” Clarke barks as they turn around the corner. She dodges a couple of creatures, jumps on one and punches another, eyes still on Cage’s retreating figure. She fishes her dagger from her belt and cuts a straight line on the inside of her arm, reaching around for the small GPS tracker embedded there while chasing this scumbag.

She gets it in no time. “Wells, come get me. I have a job for you.”

The air crackles and Wells appears beside her. She gives him the tracker and the instructions, a firm ‘be careful’ and sends him off.

“Monty, please tell me Wells did it,” she says.

“Give me a sec – uh – oh God, he did it!”

It’s still too early to celebrate but when Shadow catches up on her, she feels it thrumming in her veins.

They corner Cage in an alley, and it turns out that when he’s alone, he’s completely powerless. In less than a minute, he’s overwhelmed and on the ground, non-face on the ground as Raven ties his hands with the cancelling bracelets she invented.

Kane arrives on the scene with the back-up, nodding at all of them. “Great job, team. You just caught one of the biggest enemies _The Ark_ has ever encountered.”

He turns and gives Shadow a nod, a gesture that looks like something else is being relayed and she can’t help but feel as if there’s something else there, too. But Shadow (Bellamy) is turning to her, smirk on his lips and suddenly, it’s too hard to breathe again. He corners her where his back is turned to the others, a space that’s private, only for them.

“Don’t tell me,” he says, his lips curling around the edges. They certainly don’t have the time to have a conversation about this, with the clean-up and the reports to do, but – they can handle themselves. “You know me from the station? You’re someone I heroically saved from a fire?”

She chuckles because he is ridiculous when he’s not _Shadow_. “Not even close. Try roommate.”

He shakes his head and gives her a soft smile. She blinks up at him. “How long have you known?” she asks.

Bellamy frowns. “The moment you said you can handle yourself. There could only be just one girl as stubborn as that.”

His smile is bright as he takes his mask off the same time she does. They smile at each other until Raven raises her eyebrows from where she’s standing a few feet away from them. “I can’t kiss you right now, can I?” Bellamy asks, eyes on her mouth.

She shakes her head and leans up on her toes to press a dry, chaste kiss on his lips. He chases her when she pulls away, a groan rumbling in his chest.

“I think I love you,” she mutters, and his eyes flutter. “So… this is definitely not a professional _thing_.”

He nods. “Good.”

“Good?”

“I mean – me, too. I’m in love with you, too. And I also definitely feel like this isn’t professional. But… we can handle this, right?”

She thinks of Lexa and Finn, she thinks of all the dangers of dating a superhero. She thinks this is Bellamy and he’s different. And she might give this a try. “Yeah, I’d never doubt that.”

*

He reveals to her later that night that Kane is his boss at the station, the one that found out who he was, and deleted the files for his protection. It turns out that the night they both disappeared, he had a run in with Cage and it left both of them pretty severely injured.

And then he also reveals that he’s thinking of joining _The Ark_ with his sister. “Someone,” he says, giving her a piercing stare, “keeps bugging me about it. I just thought this would shut her up.”

It’s a week after that when Clarke reveals to the team that Bellamy is indeed Shadow – while he’s there of course. And she couldn’t figure out if Raven’s smug or murderous as she stares at both of them, but Wells is glad. And besides, they handled everything. They can do this.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Leave a comment below or come yell at me on [tumblr](http://hooksandheroics.tumblr.com)!


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